Penelope Clearwater
__TOC__ Statistics Full name: Penelope Juniper Clearwater Age: 28 Date of birth: 13th July, 1976 Date of Death: 14th December, 2004 Blood: Half-blood Wand: 13 inches, willow, bendy, hippogriff talon core Alumni: Ravenclaw Affiliation: A member of the Magisterium. Penny also currently works in Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. Home Life Mother: Seraphine Clearwater (nee Keogh, a rather well-known Irish pure-blood family.) Father: Damien Clearwater Siblings: Three brothers, Terrence (31), Brian (25), and Zachary (19), and one sister, Charlotte (28) Other family: Terrence’s wife, June, and their three children, Delilah, Andrew, and Lucas. She has several aunts and uncles, most of whom she doesn’t see outside of family gatherings although they manage to come across as being rather close to one another. Given the size of her mother’s family, Penelope also has way too many cousins in her opinion. Relationships with each: Seraphine Clearwater. Penelope’s relationship with her mother is one that many the world over share with theirs. While she wishes they were close, that is not the case and neither seem to want to bridge the gap terribly. Damien Clearwater. Penelope used to look up to her father but, once she realised the extent of his stupidity in the past, things became strained and she looks upon him now with mostly scorn and loathing, with the slight remembrance of how much she once loved him. Terrence Clearwater. Terry was the typical older brother and Penny hated him for it. Their relationship is civil but they aren't the closest ever. Charlotte Clearwater. Char and Penny should have been close but weren’t terribly. They talk occasionally, pry into one another’s lives every now and again, and Penny was even Char’s bridesmaid when she married at twenty-two but over the past few years things have got rather strained between them. Brian Clearwater. Brian and Penelope are close enough and talk regularly. Zachary Clearwater. Given the age gap between Penelope and Zachary the two never really knew each other and for most of her adult life Zachary has been at Hogwarts. June, Delilah, Andrew and Lucas Clearwater. Penny doesn’t really know these people. Due to the fact she’s not close to Terrence she’s only met his family a handful of occasions. She does, however, dote on Delilah (8) and thinks Lucas (3) is the cutest thing ever. Home: A luxurious flat overlooking the Rhine River in Germany, an apartment in Mayfair and yet another in Paris. The only one of these which are Penelope’s alone is the flat in Paris and that is simply because it’s the smallest, and the cheapest although it is the one with the biggest personal stamp on it. The other two she co-leases with friends of hers and only lives in when she needs to be in England, or wants to escape from France or England. Finances: The Keogh family were a rich one, if not anywhere near as well off as the Blacks and the Malfoys, but they were one of the better known ones in Ireland. The money her mother brought to the marriage is basically the money Penny was brought up on. The Clearwater fortune was done away with shortly before Penelope herself was born but, being a proud family, they never let on and made sure to keep up appearances. Personal Life Personality: Penelope was sorted into Ravenclaw for a reason; she was smart as a child and she still is. While there are those that loose whatever traits that originally got them sorted into their house she has never been one of them. Burying herself in books from an early age, the two main interests in Penny’s life from she was seven were Quidditch and reading. These interests have remained throughout her life, and when she’s not busy she still enjoys curling up with a good book. She is perceptive, and able to listen to both sides of a debate although she rarely, if ever, lets one side change her mind from her set opinion. She has always been quite stubborn about her beliefs and doesn’t foresee any change in that in the near future. Penelope has an odd sort of calm about her; she is one of those rare few who can sit perfectly still for any amount of time. She is not angered easily, but when she is it is a fearful thing to behold, a burning kind of rage that takes hold and refuses to let go. She can carry a grudge for longer than most people live, and while she may forgive she never forgets. The only time the heat of anger and power truly takes over Penny’s very being is when she’s holding her wand and watching a house, a forest, a person go up in flames. Not normally sadistic, she’ll admit to fire being her one weakness. It fascinated her as a child, a dangerous weapon that was natural, that caused such grief for people, that could be controlled and created by magic, although she doesn’t say it often, she has always wanted to experiment more with it. She’s ridiculously proud of some things. Her lineage is one of them; she is no longer as large a blood purist as she used to be and has got rather used to working with Muggles and Muggleborns out of necessity but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t still believe, in one corner of her mind at least, the pure-bloods are better than others. She’s selfish to a point and doesn’t intend for that to change but she can be compassionate at the same time and it’s not that she’s truly, unspeakably selfish—it’s simply that if dangerous things don’t have some kind of a benefit to her it takes a lot to persuade her to even entertain the though. She’s formal and can seem very stiff; she isn’t the greatest at small talk and doesn’t plan to be. She’s no-nonsense and quite bossy, very practical. She will not follow anyone who she doesn’t believe deserves to be followed but, once she choose someone or something to follow, she’s extremely loyal. Penelope is hard to get close to because she grew up in a family that was truly lower middle class but took care to maintain their outward status as being one of the richer pure-blood families. This led to her from an early age having to keep secrets and not being allowed to invite friends over and this, in turn, discouraged her from making new ones. With certain people, Penny is a very easy going individual: she’s friendly and honest to a point, witty and compassionate, prone to teasing even. On the other hand, she can be extremely blunt to everyone—whether or not she likes them. She doesn’t tolerate fools or incompetents easily and can be a bit snappish to others. Marital Status: Single Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual Strengths: Intelligent, resourceful and determined Penelope has all the traits that make a Ravenclaw a Ravenclaw. She possesses the ability to think on her feet. As a general rule Penelope knows when to shut her mouth, but that doesn’t mean she’s afraid of giving her own opinion. She follows instructions well, and doesn’t take any shortcuts; the same way she refuses to put things off or dawdle. It’s this which helped her work her way up through the the Droogs ranks; her ability to follow orders and get the job done is something quite a few others lack. She’s honest to a point, pragmatic, and not afraid of getting her hands dirty so to speak. She is an excellent photographer and views it more as a hobby than a job. She is also very good with charms and potions. She has a certain fondness for problem and a patience for them which she doesn’t have with ordinary people. A problem she can work on for hours on end, people she can’t usually stick for that long. Weaknesses: An inability to think outside of the box has been one major flaw of Penny’s that has held her back. She believes passionately in the cause she’s dedicated herself to and is willing to sacrifice most anything for it. Penny can be obscenely proud sometimes, she’s selfish at others, and tends to think her opinion is the only one that matters, although she will listen to other peoples. She can appear to be cold at times because, really, she is to an extent. Arrogance and stubbornness are big traits which have always caused a bit of a problem. She’s not shy about expressing her opinions, but is generally is shy around new people. She is also very, very crap at Transfiguration. Although she passed her OWL and NEWT in the subject she had to work doubly hard at it. Because she doesn’t make friends easily, given who she is and what she does, Penelope is very attached to those she does manage to collect. Not very experienced when it comes to duelling. She can be scathing towards others at times, sometimes without meaning to, simply because it’s who she is. The same way sarcasm tends to work it’s way into her everyday speech and manner when she gets comfortable with someone, or if she is talking about something which she feels particularly annoyed about. She’s not terribly good with people and makes no attempt to be usually. She’s been called a stuck up bitch in the past and doesn’t mind because insults directed at her are usually ridiculous things, anyway, thrown by people who don’t know her. Despite the fact that she is patient, generally, she’s also incredibly impatient at times: she’s no time for unwanted hysterics, with no real reason, and if people are acting stupid or annoying her she’ll call them on it. She’s rather blunt. Boggart: Rodolphus Lestrange attacking her with his knife—she’s seen it him do it once and had nightmares for weeks. Patronus: Bee - denotes industrious and cooperative teamwork and denotes diligence and a sense of order. Mirror of Erised: Herself, standing in front of a family tree completely free of any impurities, with her own (pure) family at her side, knowing that she is powerful and respected. Amortentia Potion: The smell that lingers behind after a fire, the musk her mother wore when she was little, freshly baked bread, and garlic. Miscellaneous: Penelope’s main weapon of attack is fire—she loves the smell, the look of it, the screams people make as they burn to death. Despite this however, Penny’s plans tend to be well-thought out—she isn’t the kind of person to simply run around setting things on fire because, hey, fire is pretty. She is multilingual, largely due to her travels and the fact that her mother insisted she had a tutor for languages from the time she was a small child. This was mainly to keep up appearances, although some languages she has been able to learn through relatives. Her mother and her mother’s family, for example, all speak Irish and her father’s brother, Jonathon, is fluent in Japanese due to the fact he lives and works out there for half of the year. She is fluent in French, Japanese, Irish, and German, knows a little Spanish, can speak pigeon Chinese and knows enough Russian to be able put across basically what she wants. What languages she doesn’t know, she is very good at using almost undetectable translation charms. Aesthetics Appearance: Penelope has often been compared to her mother, when it comes to looks, and she certainly doesn’t mind this. Seraphine Clearwater was considered very pretty in her youth and still is said to be, and she manages to look younger than she is. Penny has inherited this trait and has found that, while it irked her at school, she quite enjoys the benefits it brings now. She has dark hair, usually worn long, which is naturally wavy—a great progression from the unruly curls she possessed during her time at Hogwarts and in part due to the fact that she went through a period of using Straightening Serum on her hair nearly every morning. Chocolate brown eyes, high cheekbones, a fair complexion and a rather strong jaw all contribute to her appearance. She’s not vain but does tend to wear dark eyeliner, because she feels it brings her eyes out more and she likes that; they’re her favourite part of her appearance, despite the fact that they’re very expressive. Penny is a fairly short woman when not in high heels, curvy, with large feet which she despises because of how hard it is to get shoes that fit. She has a few scars on her calves, one that runs diagonally across her lower back, and a fairly straight, faded scar across her throat that she has been known to use charms to cover. Height: Five foot four, although she tends to wear a lot of high heels or shoes with heels simply because she detests being looked down upon by nearly everyone. Weight: 10 and a half stone—curvy for her height, but still considered slim. Hair: Dark brown, wavy, usually worn down. Eyes: Brown. Style of dress: Penny wears robes when she has to and her pyjamas when she doesn’t. On the occasions were she’s not in either, she’s developed an attachment to well fitting shirts and tailored skirts, and can even be found on occasion in a dress. She’s not overly girly but she’s damn proud of the fact that she takes after her mother, even if it does give her rather strong jaw, and dresses to play up on that fact. History The Clearwater’s were supposed to be an upper class pure-blood family but, in truth, they were nothing more than a group of people pretending to be above their station. Their home was large and expensively furnished, their grounds extensive, their clothes elegant and all from designers. Their food was minimal, their debts were massive, and the amount of tears shed by Seraphine Clearwater could have filled the Atlantic Ocean twice over. Penny was the third born into a family that could barely afford to have one child and this was something she was always aware of. A perceptive child, Penelope quickly realised that her parents, though desperately in love with another, really couldn’t survive on love alone and from the age she was old enough to understand what divorce was she kept expecting them to do that; it never happened, something which shocked Penelope then and still manages to. Secrecy was something Penelope grew up surrounded by, and something she had to get better at once her acceptance letter to Hogwarts arrived. Up until that point, Penny didn’t have a lot of contact with anyone other than her family; friends were discouraged because there was the possibility they could stop by and see that half the rooms in the house weren’t furnished, or that there was barely enough food to feed the people who lived there. Entering into an environment which contained so many other children who were, roughly, her own age both intrigued her and frightened her a little bit. She has a ridiculously shy person, at first, choosing to spend most of her time in the library with books. It was in the library she made her first friends, there she met Percy Weasley. When the two started dating and this relationship lasted even passed when Penny was Petrified—something which annoyed her immensely, especially given the fact that she was not a Muggleborn, but a pure-blood and a proud one at that—Penny was slightly shocked, but pleased nonetheless. Never one to get too close to other people, the fact that she’d managed to find a friend, at the very least, in Percy was something she was very happy about. Penelope left Hogwarts with ideal grades: O’s in nearly everything, a bright future ahead of her, and a bright smile and attitude to go along with it. That all changed, however, when only three months after she left Hogwarts, her family’s house, land and most of their possessions were repossessed by Muggleborns and sold onto Mugglborns. The Clearwaters’ debts had finally managed to catch up on them and Penny suddenly found that she and all her family had to move in with the only aunt who would take them; a blood purist by the name of Caoimhe* Keogh. Penny’s belief in blood purity had grown since she left school, especially after ‘Mudbloods’ took away everything her family had worked to sustain and had humiliated them in public. Her mother was devastated, her father became lower in her estimation, and her brother sunk even lower when he began dating the cousin of the family who had thrown them out. It was her aunt Caoimhe who introduced Penny to the fundamental ideas behind the Death Eaters, who convinced her that they weren’t just a band of people who were thwarted year after year by those decades younger than herself, and it was because of Caoimhe’s influence that Penny first contacted the Death Eaters. Penny was always proud of her pure lineage and, up until she was brought before the Death Eaters, she had seriously considered that joining the Death Eaters would be a good idea, thanks to her aunt Caoimhe’s influence. It took that one meeting for Penelope to understand that she had been deluding herself. The Death Eater, to her, seemed like a highly fanatical lot, not interested in planning or anything of the sort bar bare-faced violence. Penny left that meeting with a deep rooted disgust for Death Eaters and it remains to this day. Due to the fact that her aunt began to press her about why, exactly, she wasn’t going to join the Death Eaters it took Penelope barely weeks to make the decision to move out and, after securing a job as a photographer with a wizarding celebrity magazine, she moved out. It wasn’t the sort of job that challenged her and it didn’t interest her greatly but Penny was allowed a fair bit of free time during which she Apparated, Flooed or found some other way to travel across war-torn France and England, taking any pictures she could. This is how she started to make a bit of money through her photographs. She’s not afraid of the darker side of life or of getting her hands dirty and she was one of those who’d put herself through anything, do anything, to get a photograph she really liked. It was during this time she first came in contact with the Droogs and it was a purely chance meeting with one of their members she inadvertently caught on camera. After a brief confrontation—during which Penelope found herself on the end of a knife, shaking and completely terrified but somehow managing not to scream—she set out to learn more about this group and it didn’t take her long to decide she wanted a part of the action. She joined the Droogs (now called the Magesterium) a short time before the wars end and has been a member ever since. *pronounced ‘Kee-vah’. Current Activities Ruth, love, you need to write something here....for now. Meta Player: Ruth PB: Anne Hathaway Category: Characters Category: Deceased Category: Magisterium Category: Previously Played Characters